<p>Honest question. This crap affects then way more than it does poor students. Poor students benefit from the Blue & Gold Opportunity Plan. If you make less than $80k a year, it's cool. Your financial aid will increase in grants to cover the tuition hikes. Meanwhile, the wealthy and upper middle class gotta fork out more money.</p>
<p>All of my poor friends are joining in the whole Occupy thing to protest tuition, but none of my wealthier friends even bother lol. WUTS UP WIT DAT NEW JERSEY?</p>
<p>Wealthy and upper middle class students go to Berkeley because it is better academic institution than a lot of private schools that they could afford to go to. They don’t choose Berkeley because it’s “public” so they don’t care if it has the price tag of a public school or a private school. </p>
<p>A lot of parents donate money to their kid’s school anyway. And nobody thinks about this, but raising tuition is a good way of getting more money out of the wealthy parents don’t mind paying a higher price tag. And as you said, the higher tuition doesn’t have that big an impact on the poorer students because there’s still a lot of scholarships and the Blue and Gold Plan…</p>
<p>The proposed tuition hikes for in-staters is WAY more affordable, even in full, than what some out of staters are paying. Now, add “wealthy” to the mix, and I don’t even think it should matter…</p>
<p>Blue and Gold Opportunity covers probably the bottom 70% of household incomes.</p>
<p>However, note that many people have inaccurate ideas of what “middle class” is. While the actual median household income is about $50,000 per year, many people from households with much greater incomes still think of themselves as “middle class”. So students from upper income households who erroneously think of themselves as “middle class” may be annoyed at the fee increases.</p>
<p>That said, people in the top 30% income households, but below the top 10% or 15% income level, may find that the fee increases to be the most burdensome relative to their household incomes. Lower to upper middle income households will get increased Blue and Gold Opportunity grants, while very high income households probably won’t see the increases as that burdensome compared to their income.</p>
<p>Americans are basically the only people who think of “middle class” as being around the median level of income. The true “middle class”, consisting of well educated individuals who have high salary but <em>still derive most of their income from the sale of labour rather than ownership of assets</em>, is probably around 99.9th to 85th percentile of income.</p>
<p>That kids have to pay a tuition that is at least somewhat close to the true market price?</p>
<p>It is still a bargain price when compared to what out of staters must pay.</p>
<p>There is nothing to protest against. The State of California is broke. They have no choice but to raise tuition. And please don’t tell me that we should simply tax the evil rich people. They are already paying plenty of taxes in California. </p>
<p>Instead of protesting, the truth is that you should be thanking your lucky stars that California has such a good state university system, and not be complaining that you are being asked to pay a very reasonable tuition for utilizing that system. What you are protesting against, we out of staters wish we had !!!</p>
<p>When people say “middle class,” they mean “not quite rich, certainly not poor.” I’d say that the top 10 or 15% of households (excluding the top 1%) would meet that definition.</p>
<p>Based on that chart, a fair chunk of even the top 10% aren’t (at least immediately) affected by tuition hikes, because of the policy to maintain tuition at current levels for students making less than $120,000 (this is different from the Blue and Gold Plan, which has a lower maximum income and is a zero tuition policy).</p>
<p>This is why, in the Anti Occupy thread, I proposed a drastic increase in tuition for the top income level. As another data point… Students from households making $180,000 or greater make up 15% of the total undergraduate student body of the UC system, but only 5% of households in the US make $180,000+. The disparity is actually greater, since people tend to make more money as they near retirement (which might be 10 or 15 years after sending their children to university). I’d guess (and this is purely a guess) that closer to 3% of households with college-age children make $180,000 or more per year.</p>
<p>Edit: @floridadad55
Hear hear. I think the better question is “Why do students who aren’t affected by tuition hikes protest them?”</p>
<p>^ Easy. They want to follow Berkeley culture and only know about superficial details. This alone is enough cause for them to go out and be rebellious.</p>
<p>Just an aside, funny note. My class had a quick discussion about the protests the other day and this girl brought up the Blue and Gold plan. My professor had no idea about it and it just kind of killed the discussion. I lol’d</p>
<p>Which just shows that your friends need to work on their critical thinking skills, at least wrt tuition. By increasing tuition on the wealthy, UC is able to maintain it high academic programs. And, one-third of every dollar so raised on the wealthy goes directly to the poor students. It’s a defacto 33% tax. And isn’t increasing xx on the wealthy the goal of the Occupy crowd?</p>
<p>Instead of lowering tuition, your poor friends should be in favor of increasing it even more. If Cal was able to raise more money on fees, it could offer better services to all. Win-Win.</p>
<p>Well said. And because no one is forced to pay tuition (there are numerous private options), unlike taxes, it should be more palatable to the right.</p>
<p>Raising tuition on the wealthy just makes a ton of sense. The main problem is that low tuition for all has become such an article of faith for the left that the policy can’t get any traction.</p>
<p>What may be more worrisome for many students from lower and middle income households is the situation at CSU. There does not appear to be a Blue and Gold Opportunity like financial aid policy at CSU. Although CSU fees are lower than UC fees, they are rising, and some CSUs are reportedly not able to get all of the students who need classes to graduate on time into the classes they need for their majors (and this is despite the fact that CSUs start freshmen in declared in their majors and make it difficult to change major, presumably to reduce the unpredictability of the number of students in each major).</p>
<p>Yes, the CSU students have a legitimate gripe, though they should remember that $6,000 is still dirt cheap.</p>
<p>Does anyone have any insight into why schools charge a flat per-semester price, and not a per-unit price (like community colleges do)? I suppose this can help students when classes are plentiful, but when students can’t get the classes they need they can really get screwed. </p>
<p>It might make sense for CSU to switch to $200/unit, which would be the same as $6000 a year for 30 units. That way students who don’t get the classes they need don’t pay.</p>
<p>However, the absence of a BGO-like financial aid program can make planning one’s CSU finances a gamble for a low to middle income household, especially if there is a significant chance of involuntarily delayed graduation. A high school senior and his/her family may see an affordable net cost as a freshman, but wonder whether s/he will be able to afford his/her senior/5th/6th/7th year without unreasonable student loans in the face of high and unknown fee increases.</p>
<p>For in-state students, it depends on whether you have 0-6 units or 6.1+ units per term. The out-of-state supplement is a per-unit added fee.</p>
<p>Going strictly by unit in all cases would be more like a “four year community college” model. Some CSUs which are mostly commuter campuses are probably already like that; some students at those CSUs may prefer that since they can attend part time at lower cost. But the more residential CSUs might have more students who would not like CSU to move in that direction, since enforced part time attendance due to class space shortages would mean having to pay room and board for longer. However, if the CSUs are already rationing class space in this way, then changing the fees to be per-unit would make the situation slightly less annoying (since students would not have to pay full fees if they can only get 8 units of classes).</p>
<p>Some schools also charge different levels of tuition based on major or courses. For example, UIUC, Virginia Tech, and Texas have higher fees for science and/or engineering majors who take a lot of lab courses, which are more costly to offer.</p>
<p>Interesting points. I’ve seen some discussion of charging more for science and engineering type majors since the cost of instruction is higher, but I’m not sure I agree. As I see it, too many students are liberal arts/humanities/social science majors as it is (I’m one of them). </p>
<p>If the point of a public university system is to give more people college educations, and if the point of that is to promote economic growth, it stands to reason that the system should promote the majors that are most in demand. Right now, that’s engineering, the hard sciences and the like. </p>
<p>With that in mind I’d be comfortable with a higher level of tuition for the less needed majors, both to subsidize the most costly (to the university) majors and to encourage students who are on the fence to go with the more useful program.</p>